It doesn’t get much more patriotic than a Shakespeare quote about our national patron saint – and, in a further twist, Shakespeare’s birthday is also on Saint George’s Day, April 23rd. In truth though, these days most English people would be hard pushed to tell you anything about Saint George other than he took on a dragon. However, in other countries such as Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia and Latvia, St George’s Day is traditionally tied in with the start of the cheese-making season and is a time to bless their livestock. All of which seamlessly leads me into Pong Cheese’s English Selection Box, which would seem to present the ideal way to honour St George, Shakespeare and farm animals all in one.

England has a long history of cheese-making. Archaeological evidence from animal bones and residues found on pottery fragments suggests that Neolithic man was keeping animals for their milk, and processing it into butter and cheese. The Romans, known as master cheese-makers, are thought to have bestowed their skills on the natives, in particular teaching them how to make harder, long-keeping cheeses. For centuries, cheese provided a portable and storable source of valuable protein – ‘white meat’ that could sustain families through the long, lean winter months.

The birth of many iconic English cheeses are so buried in history that we only have myth and legend to explain how they came about. Was Cheddar really invented when a milkmaid left a bucket of milk in a cave and returned to discover it had turned into delicious cheese? Did the Romans develop the first Cheshire cheeses, rock-hard as Parmesan, that they exported back to Rome? Were the French monks of Jervaulx Abbey the first people to exploit the abundance of sheep in Yorkshire to make the original Wensleydale?

We’ll never know for sure but I’ll be writing some more about English cheeses over the next couple of weeks, leading up to St George’s Day. The choice of products in this Pong Box represents a great selection for a varied cheeseboard – something old, something new, something goat and something blue:

Gosh, it’s a hard life but someone has to review cheeses. No calcium deficiencies in your family! I look forward to hearing more about the cheeses in due course. Like Margaret, I feel the price is a bit hefty, but it’s always interesting (and entertaining) to read your posts.